Tailored Transverse Mode Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser: Hollow Laser Beam Emission through Circle Aperture

Yinli Zhou,Jinjiang Cui,Yongqiang Ning,Xing Zhang,Lijun Wang,Yugang Zeng,Jianwei Zhang,Youwen Huang,Yun Liu

doi:10.1109/jphot.2020.3003927

Abstract

Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers that can be controlled to emit hollow laser beam in certain LP21 mode are proposed and fabricated. A circular inverted surface relief with precisely designed diameter and thickness is introduced through theoretical simulation. The fabricated device shows a stable single LP21 mode operation with excellent robustness of mode and power to temperature. Preliminary analysis attribute the excellent performance of the device to the inverted surface relief, leading to hollow near-field spot distribution.

Highlights

Semiconducting vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) have emerged as attractive lowcost light sources with advantageous properties, such as low power consumption, surface emission and high modulation bandwidth [1]–[3]
Based on the application requirements, VCSEL operation modes are broadly classified as single fundamental transverse mode (SM) and multiple transverse mode (MM)
We demonstrate a simple VCSEL that can provide hollow laser beam (HLB) from room temperature to high temperatureby using an inverted surface relief

Summary

Introduction

Semiconducting vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) have emerged as attractive lowcost light sources with advantageous properties, such as low power consumption, surface emission and high modulation bandwidth [1]–[3]. Based on the application requirements, VCSEL operation modes are broadly classified as single fundamental transverse mode (SM) and multiple transverse mode (MM). High-order transverse mode (HM) VCSELs exhibit novel characteristics, which can be used for many important and emerging applications. VCSELs can emit localized hollow laser beam (HLB) in some particular high-order modes. Several general techniques for producing HLB are conical refraction [15], [16], uniaxial crystal [17], interferometer [18], and photon sieve [19]. Most of these techniques require complex and large-scale optical devices. Compared to traditional techniques for producing HLB, our results provide a monolithic HLB generation method, which greatly simplifies the system complexity

Device Design and Fabrication

Results and Discussion

Conclusion